Taiwan tours for S. federal government provides funding currently for about half of all domestic basic research, down from a share as high as 70 percent in the late 1960s. While basic research activities do not create new technologies directly, they do so indirectly by contributing to the pool of scientific knowledge. The latter is a fundamental aspect of the conditions of technological opportunity that, together with appropriability, influence the direction and rate of innovative activity. In a nutshell, the conditions of technological opportunity influence the productivity of R&D investment in a particular area of innovative activity. Thus, areas of technology characterized by high technological opportunities are those where a given amount of R&D investment is more likely to be met with technical success, and vice versa. If the conditions of technological opportunity are conceptualized as a pool of knowledge and techniques supporting innovative activity, then their influence on historical patterns in the direction and rate of technical advance hinges on how that pool changes over time and why it differs in different areas of technology. Taiwan tours 2016.